


The Distant Silence

by Leyenn



Category: He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, She-Ra: Princess Of Power
Genre: Multi, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 22:42:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leyenn/pseuds/Leyenn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's harder to carry on when the battle is over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Distant Silence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nimori](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nimori/gifts).



> Written for nimori for Yuletide 2006.

The sword slides through dead blue flesh with a wet sound. He feels the snapping tear of a long-unused heart down the length of the blade in his hand, just before the sword explodes white and beyond-white with power.

In the over-brightness, in the rush of deathly silence, Skeletor smiles at him as it ends.

*

Teela slips her arm through his - Adam's - as he stands on the parapet looking down over the celebrating crowds outside. The sound is a little distant to his ears, and he wonders how long he's been standing here. The sun is high when he looks up: it must be hours. He doesn't quite remember.

Teela squeezes his forearm.

"Hi," she says brightly.

He smiles. "Hi."

"My father's been looking for you in the throne room," she says. "Aren't you coming down from here, Adam?"

He looks up into the sky again. Zoar wheels an intricate dance of wings and air currents above the palace wall, a celebration that makes his smile feel a little more genuine.

"I guess so," he says, shakes himself and follows her back into the palace.

He knows why Duncan will be looking for him. He remembers it through a faint haze: the fight, the final moments filled with the white power of the Sorceress channelled through every atom of metal in his hand, every molecule of his own body. He remembers the feeling, like soaring, as the light overtook him. He remembers that final smile.

He can still hear the silence.

*

_He slips into Snake Mountain under cover of night, alone. The unhealthy greenish glow of lichen is slippery under his fingers as he feels his way through the tunnels, old and unused for generations. His sword vibrates with anticipation and magic across his back._

_He shivers. Ahead, he catches the faint sound of laughter._

*

He goes through his days in a kind of reflective quiet, confused at night and useless during the day. If Teela notices, she doesn't tell him. He knows Orko doesn't notice.

He's not so lucky with Duncan.

It's one morning under the speeder engine when it happens. "What's on your mind, Adam?"

He looks up and bangs his head on the intake pipe. Duncan is crouching at the side of the speeder, looking at him with a tone that says he's noticed.

"I'm just fine," he says unconvincingly, and puts his head back on the floor. There's a leaking valve here somewhere and he's determined to find it.

"You don't seem like a man who's just fine," Duncan says.

He says what he hasn't found the words to say to anyone else. "It's this... this." Because he knows that Duncan will understand.

"It'll take some getting used to for you, I'm sure. You've never seen Eternia as it was in peace time."

He tweaks a valve. There's a sharp squeal of metal. "No."

"You'll find you like it," Duncan says confidently and pats Adam's foot as he stands. "You know where I am if you ever need to talk."

He does. He listens to Duncan's footsteps disappear and then lays down his tools for a moment.

Cringer nudges his foot, sounding worried. "Adam?"

He sighs. "Not now, Cring, okay?"

*

It's been a year, two, maybe more. When it's Cringer who asks if he'll ever be Battle Cat again, that's when it comes to him that he doesn't know. He doesn't have to think about it any more. His days are royal appointments, study and what work he can find to occupy his time. He's become more industrious and less essential than ever.

He takes the sword and Cringer out into the desert, where no one will see. A palace guard asks where he's going as he takes the speeder.

They stay until sunset, but though his body knows the routine he can't say the words.

*

_Skeletor expected him, of course, and he expected that. He expects the ambush when it comes, and feels half-there as he throws Beast-Man off to one side and hears the crack of a thick skull hitting rock._

_He moves on, relentless._

*

"Skeletor took so many years from us," Teela says sadly, shaking her head. Adam looks at her instantly.

"Don't say that."

"It's true, isn't it?" She doesn't wait for his answer, just goes on, harsh and strong, more than ever. "All those years we should have had peace on Eternia, all those years your father-"

He gets up and walks out of the council room. His father's sleeping chamber is just down the hall, barely ten feet from the throne room and still too far for the King to walk. Any day now, he knows, the last sacrifice will be asked of him as well, and he's still not sure he's ready for the answer.

The question of Adora has never been raised. From his childhood, he was heir to the throne of Eternia. Though his family and friends now remember her, no one has ever suggested that a princess raised on another world can rule Eternia as well as he, and he's never thought until now to think about it himself.

King Randor is sleeping when Adam nudges open the door. He slips inside and has a brief memory of another dark room, another door, another night.

His father is _old_. Randor, he realises, is a great warrior dying in a time of peace. His hair is grey and thin, his robe flowing more than it should over a thin frame that could once wield a sword greater than Adam's own. Now, lifting his head from a pillow is a challenge.

He doesn't challenge his father today. He stands in silence, watching from the corner shadows, and lets time slip away from him as it did on the battlements all those years ago, as it did at Snake Mountain, as it does so often now.

"Adam?"

His mother's voice is soft, as unchanged as ever. She can always tell when he's here.

"He's so tired now," she says gently, laying her hand on his shoulder. The pressure is soft and heavy at once. "It may not be long now," she says. Adam closes his eyes.

_I'm not sure I can be him,_ he wants to tell her. He's afraid of being him, of being this. A great warrior dying in a time of peace.

He doesn't. He can't. He's sure she knows.

*

"Adam? It's almost time. Aren't you ready?"

The sound of his sister's voice is always able to bring him a smile, however brief. Adora has only grown more beautiful as she's grown older; the violet mantle of Bright Moon highlights the softness in her eyes, the smooth tan of her skin.

He straightens his formal doublet and reaches for his robe. It's a royal blue velvet, a gift from his mother.

"That was father's, wasn't it?" Adora says as he turns around to put it on. He looks down at himself. White doublet and hose under the royal blue robe, and it's like looking down at someone who shouldn't be there.

He looks up at her and swallows the feeling. "Yeah, I think it was," he says, and even his voice doesn't sound his own. He wonders if that's how it always will be now.

"You look very handsome, brother," Adora says with a warm smile, and leads him to the throne room.

*

Teela's kisses are softer than he imagined. He's surprised to realise how little he's imagined this moment in any real way. She puts her arms around him, pushing him back onto the bed with a smile that looks as soft as it feels.

Her smile is wrong, and her touch isn't right, and he doesn't know how to explain it so he tries not to need to. He almost thinks he has, until it's over and he sees the look in her eyes.

He holds her as they sleep, and because there is no justice but always hope, she's still in his arms when he wakes.

*

_They face each other in Skeletor's throne room. Arch-enemy to arch-enemy, man to man, at last. No interruptions, no distractions. The two of them alone to face the end of the fight, as it should be._

_He draws his sword. It glints with its own light in the gloomy shadows. Skeletor stands to face him._

_"Is this how it ends, He-Man?" He raises his staff, and the walls shudder with power. "So be it."_

_He moves like lightning: his sword clashes across the length of the staff, and the battle begins._

*

"I don't understand you sometimes, Adam." Teela's voice is a sharp edge in the quiet of their private rooms. "No, actually, I never understand you any more. I'm not sure I ever did."

"I'm King of Eternia now, Teela," he tells her sharply. "Things are different now."

"Things are what they always were." She snaps it out. "It's you that's different."

"If that's what you want to think," he says, shaking his head. He's tired of it all: the constant meetings, the hearings, endless days sitting on the throne and the sound of his own voice. He wants to believe his father felt like this, but the idea that he did is painful.

"Make my apologies for the afternoon sessions," Teela says, more a casual notice than a request. It takes him until the door clicks shut to realise she's actually left the room.

*

He dreams of battles. He dreams of holding his sword, upraised, and the power flooding through him. He dreams of a face, the flash of blade and the black crash of magic, of the scent of his own fresh blood on his cheek and of a faint smile he's seen only once.

He wakes up with Teela asleep on the other side of the bed, oblivious, and turned away from him.

The smile of years ago won't leave his mind. He watches the night sky through the window and wonders if that's what it was for, in the end.

*

The quiet beauty of Etheria blooms all around him in pale winter colours, and Castle Bright Moon shines a deep gold in the twilight as they ride up through the city.

The Princess Consort and the royal children are there at the open castle gate to meet the Royal Party. There are smiles and polite kisses in front of the populace, and Adora's eyes flicker from him to Teela and back.

He's seeing to his horse when she finds him.

"There are others to do this for you," she says gently. Her voice reminds him of their mother.

"Spirit?" he asks, with a ghost of a smile. She shakes her head.

"Different. I don't go to him to escape my wife. Adam," she says, opening the stall gate and coming up to his back. His horse whickers a greeting, and she holds up a hand to rub its nose. He feels her other hand on his back, a weight between his shoulders. "What's wrong?" she asks, as if she might already know. "Aren't you happy?"

So many years apart, she still knows him better than she ever should.

"This isn't right for you, Adam, is it?"

He knows that answer, but he can't say it. It's too late.

"I'm so sorry," she says, and puts her arms around him. "Does Teela know?"

"Yes," he whispers. "And no."

She sighs. "Oh, Adam."

He grips her hand and squeezes her fingers tight.

That night he watches her up on the dais, beside her wife, and later circling the floor of the great ballroom with a slender glass in hand. She's soft and strong, regal and bright, all just like their mother was, and he envies her the ease of this future she's found for herself. Where his own went, he isn't sure, because from the outside it looks the same and yet he can't help still hearing the white silence when he stops for even just a moment.

When the dancing starts, he offers Teela his arm and leads her out onto the floor. When he passes the dais, Adora is smiling sadly from the Queen's side, and he has to look away.

*

Teela doesn't try to understand him any more. He notices it one day, the day he glances into a mirror and sees a King looking back out of ghosted eyes. He tries to remember the last time they spoke, but he can't. It hurts, in a quiet way, through the silence wrapped around his heart.

He tries to hold her that night, just to hold her, just for something, just for it to be right between them somehow, in however small a way. It's the most uncomfortable night they've spent in years until she pulls away.

*

_The sword is moulded to his hand with slick sweat and concentration. The air is choked with the wisps of black magic all around him. He knows nothing except the sight and the sound of his enemy, the smell of skin and sweat and blood, his enemy working in absolute concert with him. He had a name once, a life that wasn't this, but there's no room to remember it in the moment._

_Every movement is parried and reflected. Every moment is perfectly matched, a duet of understanding._

_This fight will never end. He's certain of that now. It feels almost fitting._

*

The pen in his hand was his father's, a gift from Duncan many years ago. It's worn smooth by his father's fingers. The wrongness of it is a bare note in the back of his mind now as he signs the latest batch of papers.

The second throne is empty beside him. Tonight the bed will be the same. He'll dream of blood and blades and a smiling skull, and wake in the night with no one there, lost.

He thinks this is how it was always going to be.

*

_He lunges, bringing the sword in a sharp arc, sharper than any but He-Man could ever make. The parry comes fast, but not quite fast enough: he slices into skin and bone, and dimly through the rage of battle hears a roar. Anger draws him in and makes his opponent clumsy - he turns, falling onto a knee, slips under the raised staff and its thick smoke of magic, draws back his hand._

_The sword slides through dead blue flesh with a wet sound._

**


End file.
